LarrysText

All these pages I've uploaded this evening (Feb. 1) are sections of a set of lectures I wrote out one quarter (and read to my poor students). This will require radical reworking and general wikification to become appropriate for WikiPedia. On this page, we can discuss how to do this (if you're into it, that is!).

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OK, here's the deal:

• I know a lot of this sucks. It is written to get the general concepts across to Ohio State undergrads. Yes, some of what I've written might be outright wrong, and most of it can be tightened up considerably. So, help me do that. Don't bother replying to something I've written here. Just make the change you think is necessary, please.
• I have taken actual stands on certain issues. You should de-opinionate these, if you can. (This, like much other but not all improvement, will have to be done by philosophers who know the issues.)
• Please render my prose a little more formal, less lecture-like.
• I have saved the text in section-sized chunks, but I think it could have been saved in much smaller chunks. If you want to do that, that would be Very Cool.
• Since these are lectures, I refer to myself, the students, Ohio State, readings, other lectures I've given (hence, other parts of the wiki) and other stuff that shouldn't belong on the wiki. If you want to help totally wikify this text, you would remove all that stuff. Please?
• I have saved the sections on pages with titles describing their content. Ultimately, perhaps, the titles should be changed, or the entirety of a certain page should be split up and put on other pages. I leave that to you.
• Finally, you might not like my style, and you might think that I don't present the issues reliably enough, and otherwise feel that this contribution is not exactly a boon to WikiPedia. If that's the case, you can feel free to replace what I've written with your own golden prose; I'd just appreciate that you convey roughly the same information that I do (i.e., you cover the same topics and say the same (true) things I have to say about them). If these textbook entries are placeholders before better stuff comes along, that's perfectly fine by me. The lectures are long since over and it took me all of an hour to upload them to the wiki! So I won't mind, really!

I think that's it for now. Any comments or questions?

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Could the portions of text be marked with a link to here until they are wiki'ed? I stumbled into the PhilosophyOfLanguage lecture, with its references to 'earlier' lectures and all... The msec of confusion was fun and all, but labeling might help. --PhillipHankins

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Yes, I'll do this if someone doesn't beat me to the punch. -- LarrySanger

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Since you agreed, I've taken started. Or did I start before... whatever :) I'm adding a standard "<The following is a portion of LarrysText, wikification is invited>" to the top. --PhillipHankins